~ Learning ICTs for fun and for work

Tag Archives: technology

I was just looking on Pinterest and I came across this fantastic image of 21 Things Every 21st Century Teacher Should Do This Year. It is a list compiled by Sean Junkins from this blog post by Mr Hooker. (so much linking around!) The blog post is really good and gives a description and example of each idea.

The ideas are all technology based and show ways in which we can use technology in relevant and educational ways. I want to try so many of these ideas now! They seem very simple to do and effective as well.

Well hey there! I know I’m behind but I’ve just been working through the Week 5 work and came across the Australian Curriculum Lessons that David put up. I’ve only had a quick look but it looks super great! I love that it is all specific Australian lesson plans for the Australian Curriculum. In searching on Google, so many lesson plans and unit ideas are American and while they often have some good ideas, it’s just not quite as helpful. This website, however, is full of Aussie lesson plans for our curriculum. It’s all sorted into subjects and grade levels. I think it will be very helpful!

Talking about lesson plan ideas and resources… one of my friends introduced me to this great website a few years ago called Teachers Pay Teachers. It’s a site where teachers can sell their lesson or unit plans for free or a set price. I have found it very useful when I’m teaching to just go on there and search for the topic I’m doing just to have a look at what they are doing. I have only ever downloaded free resources or looked at the priced ones for the ideas. But it is really handy! It is very American based though, so not necessarily what is relevant to me, but still good!

Another place where I get many different ideas and resource is Pinterest!! If you search for the right things and follow the right boards people come up with some wonderful things! I really love Pinterest and I love searching for classroom ideas and resources for my lessons. It’s a great way to get a quick idea of what you could do for a topic. Very helpful!!!

Think back on one of the frustrations or time-consuming tasks you’ve already undertaken in this course (or elsewhere) with ICTs.

Was it caused by you not understanding the schemata/model of the ICT? What was the difference between your model of what was happening and the model of what was actually happening?

One of my frustrations so far is with creating my blog and the blog posts. I have made a blog before using Blogger not WordPress, which is fine but it took me a while to figure it all out. I knew what I wanted it to do but couldn’t get it to work the same way as the blogger website. My other frustration has been with writing the blog posts and where they appear. I can write them okay but then when I publish them I want them to appear in a particular spot when they don’t. But it’s all okay! It’s a learning experience and I’m sure I’ll figure it all out. And if not, then at least I still can find all my blog posts and read them 🙂

“Nothing pleases people more than to go on thinking what they’ve always thought, and at the same time imagine that they are thinking something new and daring: it combines the advantage of security and the delight of adventure.”

This quote by T.S Elliot really got me thinking about how we educate kids and how we learn. There has been this big push to get ICTs into the classroom and to get teachers to use it to teach but often times we simply play a game on the computer and get straight back to writing everything out with a pen and paper. I have had a prac experience where my teacher was using the new C2C curriculum and ‘using ICTs’ by putting the lesson up on the interactive whiteboard and then getting the kids to write out the maths questions in their books. He was using the new and daring ideas yet going back to his own pedagogy of writing with pens and paper.

I find myself doing this too. I learn about some amazing new websites or lesson ideas at uni but when I’m out on prac I go back to my ideas of how the classroom should be run and how I want to teach.

Hopefully this semester I can practice learning new ideas and implementing them into the classroom.